Yesterday, the more intellectually conformist element of my Facebook female friends began linking leftwing agitprop stories, like this one featuring a petition and all presenting one-sided, partisan, and axe-grinding accounts of the February 26th shooting of a 17-year-old African American by a 28-year-old Latino neighborhood watch captain in the Orlando, Florida, suburb of Sanford.

Zimmerman was not charged by the Sanford police, and accusations of racial bias being behind the failure of local authorities to prosecute the shooter originally leveled by the family of the 17-year-old were taken up by the local African American community and spread through the left-wing activist grape-vine to the Huffington Post’s Trymaine Lee, who one week ago produced a professionally researched, carefully drafted, and thoroughly partisan account complete with 12 pages of pictures of Trayvon Martin as a baby and small boy.

Trayvon Martin, we are informed, was unarmed, innocently returning from a trip to the convenience store, carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. He began to be followed by George Zimmerman, an allegedly self-appointed neighborhood watch captain armed with a 9mm handgun. Zimmerman was racially profiling Trayvon Martin as his Sanford gated community had experienced 8 burglaries in the last 15th months, typically by young black males.

Zimmerman made numerous 911 calls (46 over 12 years) and on February 26 called and reported Trayvon Martin as a suspicious person. Despite being advised not to follow him, Zimmerman went after and accosted Martin.

Trayvon Martin recognized that he was being followed and phoned a 16-year-old girlfriend to discuss this, rather than calling the police. Martin also responded to finding himself under surveillance by deciding to “put his hoodie on,” i.e. to put his sweatshirt hood up over his head so as largely to conceal his face.

At that point published accounts of what happened omit vital details and contradictions begin to appear.

It is evident that Zimmerman confronted Martin and a physical struggle ensued which was ended by a fatal gunshot to Trayvon Martin’s chest.

There is a very incomplete version of events provided by Stanford Police Chief Bil Lee to the Miami Herald:

“Mr. Zimmerman’s claim is that the confrontation was initiated by Trayvon,” Police Chief Bill Lee said in an interview. “I am not going into specifics of what led to the violent physical encounter witnessed by residents. All the physical evidence and testimony we have independent of what Mr. Zimmerman provides corroborates this claim to self-defense.”

To claim self-defense, someone has to show there was danger of great bodily harm or death, Lee said. “Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his story,” Lee said.

Zimmerman had a damp shirt, grass stains, a bloody nose and was bleeding from a wound in back of his head, according to police reports.

“If someone asks you, ‘Hey do you live here?’ is it OK for you to jump on them and beat the crap out of somebody?” Lee said. “It’s not.”

Immediately before the shot was fired, a witness reports hearing “someone crying — not boo-hoo crying, but scared or terrified or hurt maybe.” This witness thought she was hearing a child. It is disputed whether the cries for assistance came from Trayvon Martin or from Zimmerman.

As of this moment, the activist left has gotten 821,488 people to sign a petition accepting their own one-sided, ultra-partisan version of events and demanding the prosecution of George Zimmerman, which I think shows that you can use racial stereotypes just as effectively to whip up mob indignation today as you could a hundred years ago. The stereotypes have changed, but the human inclination to respond with predictable emotions when the right buttons are pushed has not.

The truth of the matter is we do not know what Trayvon Martin was really doing. We do not know what actually happened. And we have nothing beyond the unsupported testimony of the same combination of the local black community and the activist national left that always testifies to the absolute innocence of every African American who gets into trouble with the police, or is shot during a hold-up by an ordinary armed citizen, to go on. It was precisely the same kind of reliable sources that, a few decades ago, told us all about what those white police officers had done to poor Tawana Brawley.

Meanwhile, the same Obama Administration Department of Justice that declined to do anything about voter intimidation by Black Panthers in Philadelphia has announced its intention of intervening to deliver its own version of justice. George Zimmerman would be well advised not only to lawyer up, but to Latino up.

No Man

SDD

Could we get liberals to issue an official Victim Hierarchy? I know that we are to presume that Black and Hispanic and homosexual victims deserve our immediate support if the other party is white and heterosexual, but that’s not true here. Maybe Black trumps Hispanic because the skin is darker? What if the Hispanic were homosexual? What if he were Muslim? Without such a guide I get confused as to whom I’m supposed to direct my anger (prior to having any real facts, of course). Sometimes an arbiter like Clarence Dupnik (Pima County Sheriff) mediates the dilemma by calling one party a conservative, but we don’t even have that to go on here yet.

Chris

I understand you may disdain liberals but as the other commenter alluded to, maybe you should take a few minutes and think this one through a little more. Contorting your mind to somehow bring up the Obama Administration and Black Panthers into this is odd. That said, you do a decent job of summarizing this if all your extra baggage is stripped out.

“Zimmerman confronted Martin and a physical struggle ensued which was ended by a fatal gunshot to Trayvon Martin’s chest.”

hillclimber

GoneWithTheWind

What would you do? You are on your back and a 6’2″ football player is sitting on your chest punching you. Would you:
A) let the kid beat the shit out of you because he is a minority and allowed to?
B) Let the kid beat the shit out of you because after all you followed him and asked him if he lived in the nieghborhood so you deserve it?
C) Pull out your gun and shoot him to stop the beating?

John Mirra

Hello! Former Kossak here! I was banned for simply pointing out the facts of the case. The reality is that legally all that really matters is who attacked who first. If Zimmerman was attacked he is innocent, if he was the attacker then he is guilty of manslaughter. Of course stating the obvious will get you banned from DKOS.